


Memories

by decaf_kitty



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Anbu Umino Iruka, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Hatake Kakashi, Bottom Umino Iruka, Clone Sex, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, First Time, Genjutsu, Gratuitous Smut, Hokage Uzumaki Naruto, Hunter-nin Iruka Umino, I promise there's a happy ending I care about your heart, Inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Interrogation, Intimacy, M/M, Rokudaime Hatake Kakashi, Romance, Suspense, Top Hatake Kakashi, Top Umino Iruka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:08:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21701218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decaf_kitty/pseuds/decaf_kitty
Summary: Happily retired, in domestic bliss, life should be good for Kakashi. Unfortunately, however, he is currently being interrogated by an unknown hunter-nin going through his most precious memories.As his world is displayed before him, he sees his life with Iruka and their long love affair. He grows desperate to reunite with his partner and decides he will return to Iruka, no matter what.Inspired by the film, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004).
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 71
Kudos: 316





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EternalSurvivor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalSurvivor/gifts).



> I made a list of things I wanted to try:
> 
> * post-Hokage Kakashi  
> * older Kakashi / Iruka  
> * Long-Term Established Relationship KakaIru  
> * retired Hunter-nin Iruka  
> * "Inception"-style genjutsu interrogation  
> * assassination attempt with stolen identity  
> * gratuitous amounts of sex/smut  
> * deeply intimate romance  
> * "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" inspired memory travel
> 
> This is for EternalSurvivor, my dear friend who deserves greatness.
> 
> I hope they enjoy - and that you do as well. 
> 
> ____

The wintry bite, the orange-red leaves, the ancient wood…

Standing alone in the living room, Kakashi slowly surveyed his family’s compound. The tatami mats were worn-down, familiar and fondly used. Smells lingered from a meal of eggplant miso soup. Distant sounds from the village floated by… innocent laughter of pre-genin, the sharp shout of a sensei. 

The Sharingan was not needed to observe his world. He still had his wits and decades of experience. 

He knew this wasn’t the Hatake family estate at all.

This was genjutsu.

At the exact moment of his epiphany, a twinge traveled up his spine, and he looked left to the foyer.

There, beside his father’s discarded sandals, a shadow swept into existence. The figure was blurred at the edges like a child had tried to erase her mistakes. It became male over the next few seconds. Staying still, with only his head turned, Kakashi kept his dual gaze dark and fixed on the other man. The jutsu entrapping him… it was clearly the creation of this person… this shinobi becoming real.

Soon, the man coalesced into reality. 

The sight of him… 

Fear crawled across Kakashi’s skin, sick and lurching.

It was a Konoha hunter-nin. The old kind. His outfit was retired: it was from before the Fourth Shinobi War. His mask was bone-white. Its markings were night-black, curling like inner spiral of the Konoha symbol. The hunter-nin’s hair was just as dark, tied up in a traditional style meant more for women. His pitch-black hair was waxed, tied tight into a bun, and decorated with a bright blood-red comb. Four equally scarlet hair sticks framed the white-and-black hunter-nin mask: a nin of three hues.

The vision was as illusory as the rest of it. The shinobi could look like anything. They had chosen this form… the look of an old Konoha hunter-nin… the promising image of a pretty, polished man.

_Trapped by genjutsu, hm? Where was I, just a moment ago?_

A flicker of memory, breaking into the powerful jutsu –

\--- Iruka looking at him from across the chabudai, the low-lying table, the one they’d chosen on their fifth anniversary. Those tender eyes, dark brown, aged now, but still so trusting and loving. Iruka’s hand, sliding across the wood, covering Kakashi’s. His sweet lips moving, he was saying –--

Needles of pain struck his nervous system all at once, making his whole body **s-c-r-e-a-m.** He tasted bile, then blood; he’d bitten down on his tongue. His fingers felt wet – it was blood – he’d slammed his nails through his gloves, into the palms of his hand, so hard he’d cut into himself. 

He refused to widen his eyes as he stared at the hunter-nin. 

The nin had deliberately stirred up agony: they had not liked his memory invading and breaking the genjutsu.

_Well fuck you, too._

Kakashi turned fully to face the shinobi. He realized then, only then, he was wearing his usual clothing since his retirement: his loose shinobi blues, his large armored jacket, his blue half-mask, and his hitai-ate stretching across his grey-silver hair. The timing of his attire only added to his theory: he wasn’t being shown the future, he was in the present, it was the shinobi who was wearing old ancient things, it was them creating this unreal world.

The notion was accented by how Kakashi’s bones seemed to hurt just a little. 

Also… his new eye worked a bit better, made from Naruto’s pristine skill, perfectly sewn into his neurological functions. It was thirty-one years younger than his other eye, the one he was born with.

That was not something to be flawlessly imagined by a stranger who was trying to recreate his life.

This was a genjutsu where he was still himself, his present self. 

This was his real body transported into the jutsu.

\--- Iruka’s brown muscular thigh shivering in anticipation as Kakashi’s fingers, dry, scarred, without blood, running over the man’s lovely skin –-- 

_Shit._

The pain was worse this time, but shorter, much shorter, a vicious reminder to remain in the jutsu.

“What do you want?” Kakashi finally asked, fed up with being stabbed deep within his brain. There were a few dozen things that he could do to end this genjutsu, ranging from the simple and to the complex, spreading out from immobilizing this shinobi to murdering them messily in the foyer. 

He was thinking about which path to choose, which way to start and finish things, when the hunter-nin lifted their head studiously and announced, disturbingly calm, like dark skies before a storm:

“This morning, the former Hokage, the Rokudaime, Kakashi Hatake, attempted to assassinate his successor, the Nanadaime, Naruto Uzumaki.”

Kakashi could not restrain himself as both his eyes widened in shock and his muscles went as taut as a bowstring being readied for battle. He could feel his lungs do him the disservice of demanding more air; he forced down his automatic instinct to take a huge gasping breath. Blood and bile seemed distant on his tastebuds, replaced by disbelief and dismay, suddenly followed so soon by –

\--- Iruka waiting under the purple-pink cherry blossoms, scratching at the back of his head, lifting those lovely brown eyes to meet Kakashi’s, admitting he was – he was so – he was so happy – he –--

The hunter-nin cut into the memory, violence thick in their voice, virulent and nearly growling: 

“He was killed. His corpse is on the Hokage’s desk.”

Kakashi’s soul dissolved in his chest. He couldn’t imagine… what had Naruto thought? An imposter come to kill him, wearing his jōnin-sensei’s face, his skin, his visage? And now the assassin’s body…

_Wait._

“He still looks like me?” 

But a dead man should revert to his own form, his death dispelling the jutsu…

An odd sound came from behind the hunter-nin’s mask. It took a second to recognize the noise.

_They're gritting their teeth so hard I can hear it?_

“I was sent by the Hokage,” the shinobi pronounced with grinding intensity, “I’m here to ascertain if you are the real Kakashi Hatake, or if he is dead… or if you are an accessory to this assassination.”

With those words, a realization struck Kakashi as sharp as samurai sword sliding through his skull. 

“I need to speak to Iruka Umino now,” he said, flat, final, absolute. He forced himself to add, trying to be the least bit lenient, in such a time of chaos and strain, “After that, I don’t care what you do.”

The very slightest shift in the hunter-nin’s stance… but it was over as swiftly as it occurred, and the shinobi replied, sounding dismissive and chilled on the subject: “The interrogation is already underway. Submit or face the consequences.”

_Consequences it is, then._

The same second, Kakashi started to break the genjutsu by disrupting his chakra flow. He got no further than the barest waver of the wooden walls before the hunter-nin was abruptly before him. Stepping back on instinct, the other shinobi followed him, and then smashed him into the wall with one hard shove. The world shook so wildly it was as if an earthquake was damning Konoha down to her foundations and dragging the Hatake compound straight beneath the soil. Kakashi’s senses rang, sang, panged: blood and bile were nothing compared to the outright horror of this, this, this –

\--- Iruka’s beautiful eyes, crinkled, wet, upset with him, his head shaking sadly, so sadly, his words lost, gone, but his scarred expression pouring emotion, sorrow, disappointment, through time and space, making Kakashi ache, ache, ache --–

“You need to stop doing that,” the hunter-nin said in a tight, livid tone. “You’re going to break yourself, and then you’ll be of no use to anyone.”

Kakashi heard himself ask, his very heart trembling, his brain shaking, “What are you doing to me?”

The white-and-black ceramic mask in front of his own blue mask… it was old, chipped, covered in dust. This was someone from before, when there was still warfare and invasion and the Infinite Tsukuyomi. This wasn’t a gentle-natured nin of peacetime: they had grown up under Tailed Beasts, they had survived the Fourth Shinobi War, they had done this when there were threats like the Akatsuki. 

Looking into the mask’s eyeholes did not reveal human eyes.

Instead…

They were mirrors.

Two small circular mirrors…

… showing Kakashi’s own terrified expression. Wide grey eyes, nearly dilated black. Skin ghastly pale. Blue mask slipped to the tip of his nose. Shadowed scar etched into flesh, reverberating fear.

“I’m looking through your memories,” the hunter-nin explained. 

Their words blew through Kakashi like an arctic wind, freezing everything in their wake. The shinobi held him in place, two hands on his shoulders, and then Kakashi realized, so very slowly, his body protesting feebly, that he was sinking into the wood behind him, becoming one with his haunted family home. He tried to resist, trying to fluctuate the flow of his chakra, even now without use of his hands, but – 

\--- “No, you sleep in. I’ll make you breakfast. Don’t laugh! I’ve been practicing. Really - I have! Stop, don’t tickle me - Kakashi, c’mon! You should sleep more, it’s your first day off – hey, don’t – ah – wait, hang on – oh! - oh, oh God, Kakashi… yes… yes, there… please, _please _, keep doing that… Kakashi, _Kakashi_ , you know I - I love…” –--__

__The hunter-nin stepped away from him, and Kakashi hung off the wall, his mind bleeding open for all to see. His smallest, most shameful side was relieved to not have the Sharingan, to not view this, to not memorize this…_ _

__His lurid past began to flicker in front of them on a suddenly-materializing blank chalkboard._ _

__Without pity, the hunter-nin explained, anything but short and succinct: “I’ll dig down to the most buried memories, the ones that you hold closest to your heart, the ones that you treasure most.” Their voice took on a bitter, biting edge as they concluded, “Those cannot be pretended. No nin alive can create counterfeit memories so deeply within themselves. I’ll find out who you are.”_ _

__Even though Kakashi felt his very life flooding from him, he still shuddered when the hunter-nin turned back to him and declared, suddenly fully enraged, their tone rough, marred, and murderous:_ _

__“If you have killed the Rokudaime… - if you are an accomplice to the assassin who stole the Rokudaime’s face – I will break you down until you beg for death, and then I will keep you alive for years, making you relive every miserable shrieking nightmare that you have ever witnessed.”_ _

__The hunter-nin rose to their full height, their black waxed hair held high, their bloody comb and hair accessories shining a flaming furious crimson-red._ _

__Their shoulders and stance became as tense and hard as rock._ _

__“You will be nothing but bones when I am done with you.”_ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's see if I can update this often.
> 
> Sleep's for the dead. Write for the living.
> 
> Please enjoy. 
> 
> _____

_Fuck, he really cares about…_ was as far as Kakashi got before his mind melted.

The genjutsu invaded pitilessly; it conquered his prefrontal cortex with precision. He could feel it lighting up his brain tissue, snatching at memories, projecting them on the blank chalkboard. His breath wrestled out of his control. Sweat soaked his shinobi clothes so much he could smell himself. Blood dripped, dripped, dripped onto the wooden floor below, near tatami mats his mother chose.

On the screen –

\--- 

Maito Gai was bothering him again: big black eyes, troubling little punches and kicks, declarative springtime cheers of friendship and eternal rivalry. Walking swiftly away, down the dirt road, Kakashi ignored him, trying to get away, going to take a nap under a tree. Gai’s pint-sized hand swung by his face, fast, for fun, but Kakashi scowled, snapped out, “Stop it, get away from me,” and then he moved away, impatient, pissed, but Gai was training more, he was gaining muscle, he was quick, and his fist went into Kakashi’s stomach, knocking the breath out of him, and then Gai was apologizing in shock, shock, shock, it was the first real time he’d gotten in a hit, and Kakashi stared down at his shaking hands, thinking, thinking **He’s better than me? Is he better than me..?**

\---

Kakashi took in a deep breath, staring at the screen ahead of them. He barely remembered the incident… but he could tell by the sight of his smaller red-scarf-wearing friend, they were pre-chūnin and very young, so long ago, before death and disability, suffering and suicide and warfare. Their fathers were still alive then.... Ah, he was so arrogant then, he didn’t understand the value of Maito Gai… he’d thought so well of himself… he was so stupid for it. 

It made Kakashi’s throat constrict, the shame of that thought, **He’s better than me?**

It… it was a repressed memory, one he’d shoved far down into himself, embarrassed he’d ever thought such a thing about his best friend.

Apparently, it didn’t matter to the hunter-nin. They waved away the memory as if a tiny persistent gnat was pestering them. Before Kakashi could attempt to say anything to them –

On the screen –

\---

Iruka’s nervous expression, his scar shadowed, his lips wet. “Is this okay…?” The soft murmur rushed through Kakashi like a summer breeze, drawing a sweltering fever across his exposed skin. Iruka’s pink tongue, careful, licking along the side of Kakashi’s cock, throbbing, painfully hard. His brown calloused fingers uncertainly stroking Kakashi’s arousal. His hopeful curious eyes seeking out Kakashi’s, wanting and needing validation, as he opened his mouth and took Kakashi in, swallowing him down. Iruka’s scarred cheeks stretched, flushed pretty and sweet, innocent, wanton, his first time, his first time ever… their first time… 

Such heat. Such tight, tight heat. _Fuck. Don’t cum so soon. Don’t you dare embarrass yourself._ Movement, easy sliding slick movement, up and down, so tight, so so warm.

 _Fuck, fuck._ … Such strong fingers, gripping him tighter at the base… Iruka’s other hand, his fingernails drifting across Kakashi’s flexing stomach, a delirious contrast, a wondrous contrast.

Still in lavish worship, Iruka looked up at him, dark eyes burning, brutally demanding his bliss.

\---

Blood and bile flooded in Kakashi’s mouth again; sweat crept down his long facial scar. His brain was malfunctioning in the genjutsu, spread wide open like a window into his most private moments. He understood trying to clarify the details of an assassination attempt. He didn’t even mind being tortured, no matter that this jutsu was softening his nerves like ramen noodles going cold and mushy, but Iruka… Iruka wouldn’t want this shared, with anyone, ever…

“Stop, you can’t keep -” he choked out.

He only very distantly noticed the blood bubbling on his lips. 

The hunter-nin slapped the memory away. This time, they moved more violently than a simple perturbed wave. This time it was like vicious life-ending taijutsu. It was a hard strike to the spine, something that would knock a person straight into death’s embrace with one single furious blow.

On the screen –

\---

Rin’s eyes, widening, then dulling. Her blood on her mouth. Kakashi’s skin shrill with electricity. 

His heart stopping. His heart breaking.

His world ending. 

His Sharingan screaming.

He was weeping. **He was weeping.**

\---

_Shit. **Shit.**_

He was dizzy, not just sick, but dizzy. It was nausea swirling through him. It was disgust. Blackening, cancerous, tumorous disgust, touring his intestines, traveling his internal organs, boarding his brain. 

He felt tears in his eyes. 

He thought about Obito. Also dead. Also dead. 

_Wait, wait. Is this the genjutsu - ?_

_No, I’m… thinking of him on my own. It’s not on the -_

Kakashi looked at the chalkboard, now empty of memory, and horror tore through him as he suddenly realized how the genjutsu worked. He rapidly understood why older Konoha hunter-nin had used it… and why they didn’t under his term as Hokage… nor now during peacetime. 

This jutsu was designed to break people; it broke into their brain, displayed their memories, and consequentially triggered more, more, more. It eroded the present and the past, bled them together. 

He stared at the hunter-nin, standing still, facing the huge board, saying nothing, doing nothing. 

_Iruka thinks I’m dead. He thinks I tried to kill Naruto. I can’t die here. I have to -_

On the screen –

\--- 

He was on his knees, obsessed with the sight before him. Iruka was also on his knees, but he was being fucked so hard that he could hardly keep in place. The clone of Kakashi was relentlessly driving into Iruka, its red-flushed cock pounding into Iruka from behind. It was entirely silent, but the other two were not, especially the one thrusting its thick seven inches into Iruka’s mouth. That clone was wonderfully merciless with one lean white hand gripping Iruka’s freed dark hair; it was panting through parted lips, its false Sharingan fixed down on the real shinobi it was face-fucking.

The third clone was just as brutal as it forced Iruka to stroke it even harder, their hands entangled together on its cock inches away from Iruka’s face on the man’s other side. That false-Kakashi seemed as distracted and entranced as the real Kakashi. Its attention shifted from the other two every second, absorbing the sight from above, wanting to see every angle of Iruka getting fucked.

Kakashi wouldn’t touch himself, he was zealously restraining himself from getting off, but his cock twitched, restless, agonized, while observing everything before him. There was no need to look down, he could smell precum, he could feel it oozing from him, and Iruka’s continuous lewd wet sounds from getting doubly fucked just made the obscene sensation better, sharper, stronger. 

The clone fucking Iruka’s ass suddenly moved under him and brought up the shinobi’s legs, showing more of Iruka’s majesty to Kakashi, which was so violently appreciated that Kakashi heard himself give a low, uninhabited groan as his cock shuddered in response. 

The one fucking Iruka’s mouth grabbed the man’s hair even harder, clearly also enjoying the change. Iruka’s free hand was gripping its white scarred thigh, a perfect replica of Kakashi’s. His fingers dug into the muscle as he tearily gazed upwards at the second clone, excess saliva running down the outside of his throat. Iruka’s dark eyes, those dark gorgeous things, they were smoldering, staring, wanting, wanting. 

And the second clone could not handle the intensity. Its bare shoulders stiffened, its hand jittered in Iruka’s free-flowing sweat-soaked hair. There was one forceful, almost cruel shove deep into Iruka’s mouth, so rough that it made Iruka choke, but, oh, oh he liked it, his damp eyes went even darker. 

Beside the first clone’s insistent cock fucking him deep, Iruka’s own arousal was back again, his third time tonight. His cum had already twice splashed across his defined abs; the lusty stuff was streaming down his own brown thick thighs straining with each thrust of the clone into him.

The second clone tensed, clutched Iruka’s hair forcefully, and then came down his throat. The sight was frantic and delicious, and Iruka’s eyes closed in absolute elation, enjoying the raw ecstasy in his mouth while simultaneously being fucked and jerking off the third clone standing beside them.

Then the clone vanished, leaving the other two relishing the sin of Iruka’s body.

The clone’s memories of fucking Iruka’s mouth, coming in his mouth – oh… _oh, yes_... _**oh, God, yes**_...

Licking lasciviously at his bruised lips, Iruka turned his royal gaze to the real Kakashi at his feet. There was not the least bit of shame in Kakashi as he sat up obediently and absorbed the sight with his Sharingan. He memorized it down to its most explicit details, of his own replicated cock fucking, just fucking Iruka, over, and over, and over again, deeper and deeper, making Iruka’s own cock hard and slick with pleasure. 

He memorized the third clone’s scarred hand reaching for Iruka’s face, turning the man’s scarred cheek, lifting up his chin, gently opening his mouth, pushing in two long fingers.

Freeing his hands, letting the third clone do what it wanted, Iruka glanced over at Kakashi again. His mouth was exhausted, fucked so many times, but he… oh, he… mischievously smiled at Kakashi. 

The sight made Kakashi shake so much, he bowed his head, trying to control himself from orgasming untouched, unable to manage the clone’s lingering pleasure, the sheer fucking glory of Iruka Umino.

“You like this?” 

That roughened sultry voice… Kakashi looked up and beheld Iruka in awe. He had made both clones stop with the softest, easiest of touches; both of the jutsu creations had obeyed just as dutifully as their master. 

He almost couldn’t get the words out…

“Yes,” he whispered in reverence. 

Both Kakashi’s eye and the Sharingan fixated on Iruka’s slowly moving hand, dancing down his bare brown chest, past red bite marks, past overindulged dark nipples, down to his precum-dripping cock. The man stroked himself several times, slow, indulgent. Kakashi’s tongue moved in his mouth: he wanted to be there, where Iruka’s fingers were, spreading his love wet and luscious against that sweet hardness. He was staring there, at Iruka’s self-love, above where his imitation was still deeply embedded in Iruka, its silver pubic hair flush against Iruka’s pretty brown ass, when –

“Come over here. I want to fuck you while I get these clones off.”

Kakashi shot Iruka a look of pathetic wonder.

His lover only snapped his fingers and pointed at the floor. 

“Get on all fours and let me lick you first.”

And, fuck, _fuck_ , _**fuck**_ , Kakashi came right then and there without touching himself, and he still crawled over anyway, panting and huffing through his orgasm, all while feeling the weight of Iruka’s keenly impressed and hungry gaze on him the whole damn way.

\---

Kakashi was suffocating within the genjutsu. His pants were too tight; his face burned like sunlight. He was staring wildly at the tatami mats, trying to remember where he was, that this was being cruelly forced upon him, that this was an artificial world of a hunter-nin’s creation, but – 

_Oh, Iruka. Oh, Iruka, God. I miss you. I want you._

His eyes hurt as he tried to look over at the hunter-nin. His eyes felt bloody and sore, like when he’d overused the Sharingan, like when the knife sliced into his eyeball, like when Madara stole away Obito’s gifted jutsu and left a raw void in his face. But he was desperate to see –

The hunter-nin had lifted up his hand to stop the memory on the screen.

The image on the chalkboard was…

_The wood floor of our house. I… was looking at it… the rest of that time, when Iruka…_

He was horrified that his memory, this memory, was on full display to the other shinobi. 

Of course, he didn’t care about his dignity, not in the least, not in the slightest. 

But he and Iruka… this was theirs. This was something Iruka had agreed to, had wanted to do, just for them, just the two of them. It was… it was the night of their third anniversary… it was theirs… 

He’d kiss this hunter-nin’s boots, lick their open wounds until the end of time, if he could only save Iruka from embarrassment. 

He’d submit to anything - anything but this.

“Please, you can’t keep doing this,” Kakashi begged, his voice clogged with blood. “These aren’t just my memories, they’re also –” He almost said Iruka’s name aloud, but it stuck in his throat like a kunai, leaving him only to say brokenly, “Please. Stop.”

A momentary pause.

Kakashi’s brain stopped burning.

His eyes widened as he watched the hunter-nin think.

Silence.

Stillness.

Then the hunter-nin crushed their hand into a ball.

He resumed the jutsu.

On the screen -


	3. Chapter 3

\---

A montage of children.

Children he’d killed.

Chidori through the chest. One time. A second time. Then a third time.

Kunai across the throat.

Fire jutsu against a water wielder, boiling them alive.

The last image in the fading shine of their eyes… his aloof ANBU mask.

\---

Kakashi kept thinking about Naruto, how he was at the beginning, as a baby, no, later when he was a preteen outcast, no, later when he was a desperate teenager, no, later when he was a global hero. 

Blonde hair, blue eyes, his sensei had those, too, scolding him, praising him. 

_Would he be happy… how I turned out?_

_… I know he would have liked our wedding._

_He… would have hugged Kushina close, seeing us together, syrupy affection swimming in the blues of his eyes…_

Kakashi spat up blood on the tatami mat his mother rolled out for him. He could see her fingers, they were like his fingers, they were long and lean and white and scarred. She was dead, though, but, then again, he’d be dead soon, too, so it seemed smart to think about her now, for the rest of time. 

_Maybe she’d be proud, too. Of me. Of what I’ve done._

The hunter-nin took one bizarrely noisy step forward, disrupting Kakashi from his disintegration. He found himself staring in confusion at the man’s figure for several unsettling seconds. He’d - _shit, oh fuck, no_ \- forgotten what was going on, where he was, that this was torture.

The shinobi had paused the screen again: they seemed very interested in Kakashi wearing his ANBU outfit. In particular, they were examining the far left corner of the chalkboard where Kakashi’s body could just barely be seen. The memory was distant, from his teenage years, but he recognized it, the Sharingan having impeccably memorized it: he was reaching downward to snuff the life out of another ANBU who’d gone rogue. The film was still in first-person, but Kakashi’s bare arm was now in view, showing nude skin under his red tattoo. There didn’t seem to be anything unusual available for scrutiny, but Kakashi could feel his brain trying to stay together, and so he pushed instinctively against the genjutsu, rejecting its increasingly firm fatal grasp on his sanity and stability. 

Turning sharply back to him, the hunter-nin distinctly scowled behind their mask and snapped out, “Don’t do that. You’re already falling apart. You’re just accelerating it when you resist it.”

“What are you looking for,” Kakashi heard his voice splattering blood across the Hatake compound. His nerves were so fried, he didn’t feel any of the physical pain anymore, but the emotional agony…

_Iruka, I’m sorry, I can’t keep them from -_

“Whoever stole the Rokudaime’s face also stole his memories,” the hunter-nin abruptly announced, emanating more and more heat with each and every single word. “You could have taken what I’ve seen when you… killed him.” There was an awful, awkward pause, then, with brutal roasting fire, the kind that left skin-sloughing burns, the hunter-nin vowed aloud, “Your begging means nothing to me – I will discover who you are, and I will make you regret your very fucking existence.”

Kakashi felt his heart thump in his chest, just once, at first unreasonable and unexplained.

The ache wasn’t like the furnace of his brain, nor was it like the nerve damage throughout his body.

It was a thought. 

A lone echoing thought.

_A hunter-nin would never talk like that._

The sudden soul-shattering realization struck him as the shinobi shifted back to the screen.

This may not be a Konoha nin. This could be a false story, a fabrication, a lie. 

To do what? To steal information about - ? To – 

He couldn’t process it, there was too much going on, too much anguish, too many memories.

_Fuck that. **Fuck that.** They’re not getting anything else -_

On the screen –

\--- 

He was expecting Iruka to leave the rooftop after admitting he’d been wrong about the genin. Kakashi’s gaze was elsewhere, surveying the village; he felt tired but restless, parched, starved. Behind him, Iruka Umino said, “Move over, let me sit down.” He moved aside automatically, not looking at the man, confusion swirling inside of him. There was tension between them long before the chūnin exams… when their mission went bad… when Kakashi helped Iruka feeling down, depressed, disturbed about his purpose as a shinobi, the muddled meaning of his life.

“Do you think I’m stupid for doubting you?”

While the words were a bit louder than a whisper, they had the same sorry feel of something softly said under one’s breath. He was slow to look over at the shinobi sitting beside him; Iruka had sat down on his bad side on the rooftop, situating himself in the curls of Kakashi’s hitai-ate leaf symbol. 

The forlorn sight of Iruka Umino, nervously resting his head on his bent knees, waiting for Kakashi turn to observe him in his nakedly ashamed state…

_Ah, it’s hard to breathe._

The man’s dark eyes… they were as sincere as that mission, the one with so much blood and all those mistakes. Iruka had regained his strength since then. He’d soaked in Kakashi’s advice on the bench. He now publicly adored Naruto Uzumaki, the rebellious vessel of the Nine-Tailed Fox. 

His eyes… they’re so bare, so true…

_… Why is my heart pounding… ?_

“No,” Kakashi answered, maintaining his vocal composure. “Of course I don’t.”

… in response, Iruka smiled, slow, relieved. His eyes went weaker somehow, even more vulnerable. 

Although it seemed like the shinobi might not say anything else, that he might even stand up and flicker away, instead…

Iruka leaned forward, ever so carefully, never breaking eye contact with Kakashi. They were sitting closer than he’d realized, something that only occurred to him as the space soon vanished between them. He was still staring, schooling his face to show only reserved distance, when Iruka paused, gazing even more deeply into his one visible eye, their faces only a few spare inches apart.

“You promise?” Iruka asked… fragile… wholehearted. 

_I want to -_

Kakashi brushed back stray hairs loose from Iruka’s ponytail, the ones falling over his blue headband. The metal panel of his glove glinted in the moonlight, matching Iruka’s suddenly shining eyes.

_I want to kiss him._

“I promise,” he whispered, his heart pounding.

\---

Kakashi twisted against the wall; he was getting sick of seeing Iruka on the screen. He was flooded with memories beyond what was happening on display, and they were filling him with fire, with blood, with moonlight, with breathlessness, with heartbreak, with violent bone-splintering love.

The hunter-nin’s shoulders were higher now: they looked infuriated with what they were finding. 

They were much closer to the chalkboard, looking like a disapproving artist dissecting a painting. 

_Distracted – they’re distracted -_

Kakashi knew it was going to hurt, but he understood the basics of the genjutsu, and he was dying anyway, his brain bleeding and dissolving together, collapsing neural pathways into mangled messes. 

_I can’t let this nin escape._

_I won’t._

On the screen -

\---

Iruka looking at him from across the chabudai, the low-lying table, the one they’d chosen on their fifth anniversary. Those tender eyes, dark brown, aged now, but still so trusting and loving. Iruka’s hand, sliding across the wood, covering Kakashi’s. His sweet lips moving, he was saying –

“You know it’ll be twenty years next week.”

Kakashi turned over his hand and interlaced their fingers together. He enjoyed looking at Iruka in the mornings, older and wrinkled, seasoned and strong. His Academy principal attire was quite charming, too, showing so seamlessly his decades of experience and his devotion to the village. There was no need to parade around in his old Hokage uniform, and he knew he didn’t look his age, but Kakashi could easily see in Iruka’s tender gaze just how much time they had spent together…

“Did you want to do anything special?” he asked, truthfully curious. “A visit to the hot springs?”

Iruka’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “You can’t get enough of the hot springs.”

Kakashi didn’t even try to hide his sly pervy grin. “You look so good flushed and sweating.”

Pursing his lips in playful reprimand, Iruka pulled Kakashi forward, perfectly maintaining eye contact as he did so. The move was so profoundly familiar by now, they knew exactly what to do.

\---

_Break the genjutsu._

His right arm cracked through the wood of the wall, and his left leg dug down into the flooring like it was sopping wet mud after a rainstorm. The sudden energy of the motion spurred the rest of his body into subsequent action, and Kakashi broke through the part of the genjutsu melding him to his ancestral home, his entire world sparkling alive and alarmed as he moved forward in several strides.

The hunter-nin had spun around to face him: they were trying to do something in response.

_Too fucking late._

Kakashi knew enough about what was being done to him. He’d flirted with genjutsu his entire life; he’d had a Sharingan rolling around his skull for years and years. The finer makings of this particular jutsu were not completely obvious to him, but the rudimentary elements could be guessed. 

He grabbed the hunter-nin by the front of their uniform – and flung them into the memory.

The genjutsu at first rejected the alteration, but Kakashi furiously whipped through his own personal repair of it, and, just like that, suddenly he and Iruka in the past were long gone, and the hunter-nin was tripping backward over the table, falling down onto the seat cushion, the one Iruka favored. 

Both of their gloved hands were raised upwards, looking like they were trying to fend him off, but –

Kakashi snatched the nin by the shoulder.

He pulled back his fist.

And he punched the shinobi’s mask, cracking the ceramic.

The person slumped limp in his grasp.

Unable to stop himself, he coughed up blood on the other nin. 

Kakashi started to break his chakra flow so he could get out of the genjutsu. 

Out of the corner of his eye… the anniversary table shimmered, its surface shining a silvery liquid. 

He turned to assess the new danger, finding - 

_… it’s a mirror._

Instinctively, Kakashi flicked a look at the nin wilting in his left hand. 

Their mask had zigzag cracked up the middle, but the more petrifying change was… its eyeholes. Their two small circular mirror eyes were shattered into a thousand different shards. Already, several tiny slivers had fallen out of the facade, and… there was nothing but black emptiness behind them. 

But the person was radiating distressed body heat, and their breathing was low and pained.

_The shards…_

Kakashi watched in stupefied panic as the rest of the mask’s mirror flakes suddenly fell from the nin’s face all at once. The tiny reflective fragments spun in the air between the two of them, each of their million rotations catching the golden sunlight of the windows of his and Iruka’s recreated house. 

Then –

They sunk into the wood of the table, joining the earlier ones that had already fallen there. 

Kakashi was staring wide-eyed and uncomprehending at the table when – 

There -

In the mirror –

\--


	4. Chapter 4

**“No!”**

There's blood everywhere, all over the walls, the messy paperwork, the broken windows.

It's puddled under the Hokage’s desk.

\--

Their house was weeping; its sorrow was dripping down the walls.

Kakashi glanced around him: the liquid wasn’t reflective, it was opaque like paint. His shoulders felt strange, like someone was embracing him, hard, very hard, too hard. Even though his heart had been racing the whole time, it now seemed like a percussion drum, beat, beat, beating on, on, on.

Still caught in Kakashi’s single-handed grip, the hunter-nin collapsed down even further.

Kakashi fixated on the empty blackness of the shinobi’s eyes…

But then the mirror rippled again, and Kakashi turned back to see –

In the mirror -

\--

Darkness, rough, thick fabric. Rubbing back on forth on it. Pressing forehead into a hard chest. Hysterical hyperventilating. Scared scattered little breaths. A big huge one. Back to panicky inhales.

Body heat, too much, not enough. Fingers scratching across the person’s back, trying to hold on. 

Then, a whimpered cry, straight into the other’s shirt, muffling their words, their voice.

But it was - 

“You can’t die ever again.”

The sensation of being held, tightening, hardening. Hands on their back, shoving them closer. Not possible, but needed, wanted, wanting more, more, more. Hyperventilating continuing, ribcage hurting, throat closing off, eyes burning with tears and exhaustion and fear, so much fear, too much.

The terrified, shame-filled confession wept directly into the person’s heart.

“I’ll go crazy if you die.” 

\--

“They’ll die if you do it wrong.” 

Looking up at Inoichi Yamanaka. Good man. Quiet. Strong-willed. Patient. 

The room, simple. A classroom. Chalkboard in front. Rows and rows of rising seats behind. A room at the Academy. Inoichi standing in front of the desks, arms at his sides, observing so seriously.

“Move quick, verify their identity, and get out - or you and the subject will die. You must always remember to not stay in the jutsu too long. You’ll sustain brain damage that can’t be healed.”

Nodding slowly in response. Long careful inhale. Focusing, focusing.

An explosion of words, the kanji characters in the billions and trillions and beyond. Black words on white background in a swirling vortex. Words with sensations rooted in them. Words of emotion.

Picking one, that one.

**!!!**

Wincing, grabbing side of face, looking up at Inoichi in sad confused hurt.

“You have to move faster than that. They’ll resist you. That will kill you. Move. Quicker.”

That one, that memory. 

Let's see it.

-

Inoichi’s perspective, his lips parting, him blinking in wonder. Woman, his wife, brown hair, brown eyes, a slow resplendent smile. She loves him, she really loves him, just in her own quiet gentle way. 

“You’re going to be a father.”

He loves her, too. He can’t say it clearly, but he hopes she knows. He’s going to die one day. But now he’s made something with her, a child, a hope, a dream. He wants it to a be a girl. He wants –

-

**…!!**

Stepping back, shaking head in surprise. 

About to ask.

Inoichi knows the question already. He answers it. 

“They’re not all trauma. It’s anything life changing. It can be something precious.”

Looking down at the floor, at their own sandals. Swallowing. Wondering.

Wondering what they think is precious.

Inoichi’s final warning, somber, steady.

“You must not linger. If you do, both of you will die.” 

\--

Screaming in the background, on the chalkboard. Making them mad, mad, mad. Gloved hands choking the very fucking life out of the old grey-haired nin in the genjutsu. Shaking him so much, his head’s snapping back and forth. White froth, yellow bile, red blood splattering on their uniform.

Shouting, disbelieving, breaking into pieces: 

“You raped her!”

The chalkboard showing the time the old nin survived torture abroad. His slimy snake-like intestines overflowing his hands, shoving them back in, panicked, frenzied, desperation, blood loss, shock. 

His memories suddenly stilling.

His body sinking down into the dirt below like a corpse decomposing in a grave.

Out of the genjutsu. The man, dead. Blood. Vomit. Piss. Shit. 

Not enough. Should have ruined him more.

Inoichi staring at them. Staring back, hard, feeling worse than death.

Saying it. “I quit.”

“You can’t –”

Stating it, meaning it. “If you make me do this again, I’ll kill the subject and myself.”

Inoichi not replying, watching them leave.

Wiping blood off their face, and the tears, too.

Hearing the little girl’s screams echo in their head. 

Hearing him, the old nin, hearing him coo to her, “It’s fine, honey. We’re family…”

\--

Looking down at the boy, the boy Boruto Uzumaki. Little Naruto. Feistier, maybe. 

Incredulity in their voice, asking, tilting head to the side, “What did you call me?”

Boruto lowering his head, appearing full of embarrassment. A tiny frog in his right palm. Huge blue eyes skittering across the compound, the Hyūga family compound, figuring out what he should say. 

He goes with the truth, something shiny and obvious, as he declares brightly, hopefully:

“Grandpa. Dad said I could call you Grandpa.” 

Staring, staring, staring.

Then… gazing over at the open papered doors to the living room. Naruto sitting there on a seat cushion, tiredly smiling, the conversation bureaucratic and boring, but the intention good, fine. 

Crouching down, heart in their throat. Trying to get the words out. Trying to sound cool. Composed. 

“You know your dad summons these.”

The tiny frog back on center stage. Boruto grinning big, proud. “I know! Isn’t that awesome?”

Going through the hand formations. Next, a badly squashed joke clone of the same frog sprawled in Boruto’s left palm, twitching comically, looking like it had been hit by a runaway train. 

Breaking into laughter along with Boruto, until they were both nearly crying. 

Remarking. “He couldn’t even make a clone when he was in my class. It looked just like this.”

Boruto glancing up, surprised, then looking back down, newly interested in the badly made clone.

“What’s so funny?” Naruto calling out, drifting over to the commotion, wearing his Hokage white-and-reds. So much older now, all grown-up, with a son so precious and cute. Naruto, Hokage, expanding his own family, wife, son, daughter, with his long-lost parents and his two fathers, too.

A pain in their heart. Longing to see their own family. 

Standing up, seeking out their person…

On cue, Kakashi slipping out the living room, leaning against the wooden post of the building. 

Such a perfect smile, even if hidden behind blue cloth. 

His long fingers lifting just slightly, giving a fond little wave.

Blushing.

Waving back at him.

\--


	5. Chapter 5

“Say it clearly.”

Sweat soaked the Hokage robes, and Iruka’s hands were sweet cruelty holding Kakashi down. The sight was unfairly glorious from Iruka’s perspective: Kakashi was shoved hard, flat, across the Hokage’s desk, his white-and-red robes yanked up high, exposing his long white legs and the muscular curves of his ass, along with Iruka’s brown thighs pressed into him. Out of sight, Iruka was fully sheathed within Kakashi, but it was his own firm grip on Kakashi’s back and hip that was his obsession, the focus of all the attention in the world. Underneath him, clinging to the desk, the dear sex-delirious Hokage was dripping sweat from his pink-flushed face, his lips parted. He could barely keep his dark eyes open. He was so, so good in this position; he obviously liked it, too.

As Iruka waited with ruthless patience, Kakashi struggled to speak below him. His breathing was disordered, which was really quite nice, since he so often kept himself contained. But they’d been doing this a long while now, celebrating with public sex. While Iruka was enjoying himself, it was only perfect because Kakashi Hatake, the Rokudaime, had surrendered the experience of being –

_He likes it. He likes being fucked._

Kakashi’s new eye drifted back to Iruka while his face stayed pressed against paperwork on the desk. He flicked out his tongue, touching his bottom lip, then dragged his gaze up across Iruka’s body. 

It seemed impossible, but Kakashi’s scarred cheek darkened further with a heated blush. His words were a little choked in a truly lovely way, like he couldn’t think straight because of crazy pleasure.

“Deeper.”

_Oooh. Oh yes, sweetheart._

Iruka pulled partially out – and then thrust back in, hard, all the way. Under him, Kakashi’s desk went a few inches forward by the force of the motion, but the real joyous brilliance was how the Hokage squeezed his eyes shut and moaned, husky, unrestrained. Around Iruka, Kakashi’s body held him all the tighter, and it was so so hard not to come right away, but he wanted –

“Keep talking,” Iruka heard himself command more authoritatively than he meant to be.

But it worked so deliciously because suddenly Kakashi, breathing in gasps, bent face-first over his own desk, started to beg shamelessly, with much more desperation than could ever be withstood -

“More, more like that, deeper, please, deeper, Iruka, please –”

\--

_Please kiss me._

Kakashi was so lovely in the moonlight, it could just break Iruka’s heart into two solid pieces, cracking his world in half, the shards falling aside off the rooftop of this Konoha building. That silver hair, so fluid and fluffy, so unique and regal. That simultaneously indifferent-interested black eye. That wonderful show of loyalty, his hitai-ate, over his war-wound and his miraculous Sharingan. 

They were so close together. _Should I lean forward more?_

But, no, Kakashi had already done the most amazing thing, which was petting Iruka’s stray hair, something that Iruka would take to his fucking grave and well into the afterlife. 

To want anything more was just downright greedy – but, then again - !

Barely realizing he was doing it, Iruka’s body was angling closer, and, oh, Kakashi’s solitary eye roamed downwards, downwards to Iruka’s lips - he was so sure what that movement meant - !

_I’m going to kiss him, I’m going to -_

Instead, Kakashi kissed him in such a swift motion that it was invisible to Iruka. His mask was already lowered out of the way; he’d done that absurdly swift, too, entirely unseen. Kakashi began to pull away in the same speedy record time, and Iruka’s heart was stuffed way up his brain, but his hands were shinobi’s hands, rough and trained, and they grabbed Kakashi by the nape of the neck, keeping him close. The brief moment of distance between them vanished just as quick as their first kiss as Iruka crashed into Kakashi, who seemed very surprised but rapidly very, very pleased, and –

Kakashi’s tongue tested out Iruka’s closed lips, and that was more than enough to deepen their kiss, which abruptly went oh so deliciously passionate, with hot competition springing up between them.

Of course, Kakashi won: in a second, he had Iruka down on the roof, white moonlight silhouetting him. They had a tantalizing second where they looked at each other, inches apart, both clearly thinking what the fuck where they doing, but then Iruka seized Kakashi by the flak jacket and brought them together again into such a whirlwind wilderness of kissing that there were no more thoughts at all.

Just –

_Yes!_

_Yes, yes, yes!_

\--

“Yes! He passed!” Iruka cried out, pumping his fist high in the air. He was so distracted that he almost didn’t realize the profound amusement radiating from Kakashi Hatake. But it was impossible not to notice, as the jōnin was unmistakably smiling underneath his blue mask, enjoying Iruka’s excessive emotional reaction. Like always, his stance was loose and lazy, but his single eye shone with unapologetic entertainment.

As embarrassment lapped through him like ocean waves, Iruka tossed Kakashi a pointed look. “I’m not ashamed to be happy for Naruto,” he said truthfully, even though he knew it was un-shinobi-like to be so elated, particularly only for one student.

“You should be proud, sensei,” Kakashi replied, sounding easygoing. “You got him here.” 

But that wasn’t entirely true, which Iruka made clear by saying in correction: “You deserve congratulations, too, Kakashi-sensei. He’s grown a lot under your supervision.” He studied the jōnin critically and added with a bit of playful sharpness, “Even if your methods are cruel and unusual.”

The other man was still so mysterious, but Iruka could have sworn Kakashi looked particularly pleased by the compliment, even including the last part about his unconventional teaching style. 

“Maybe we could have a date to celebrate?”

Iruka felt his face go slack upon hearing Kakashi’s outwardly lighthearted suggestion. He blinked, surprised by the easiness of the idea but also because Kakashi’s body language hadn’t changed at all when asking Iruka out for a date, their first date. They had kissed that one time on the roof – but –

It must have been too long of a delay, because, all of a sudden, the shinobi shrugged. 

“We don’t have to.”

Frantic not to lose the opportunity, Iruka took a step forward and answered rapidly, “No!” which apparently, to fast-moving Kakashi, seemed like a full rejection, because the man’s face fell in such an odd embarrassed way that Iruka was suddenly stumbling and turning bright red, “No, I mean - I want to go out with you. I do. Let’s go out. You and me. Both of us. Together. On a date, together.”

As he kept stammering, half-flailing his hands, Kakashi became more amused, smiling under his mask, and finally waved a hand as if trying to dismiss how awkward Iruka was being in response. 

“Do you want to kiss before or after our date?” he asked cheekily, his one eye curving along with his hidden smile.

It was such a tease that Iruka would not be bested by it, so he took the extra few steps and kissed Kakashi’s masked, scarred cheek and then grabbed the man’s hand and started pulling him through the streets, feeling his whole world turn warm and wondrous.

\--

“Such a handsome shinobi, asleep in bed… what wonderful dreams are in your head?”

It was not the first time he’d said the rhyme to Kakashi as the man snuggled back into the sheets, but this time was rewarding because it was the second day after Kakashi retired from being Hokage, and that meant he really could dream as much as he wanted. Yesterday, they hadn’t gotten to breakfast because of how handsy – and mouthy! – Kakashi was, but today, on the second day, Iruka would prove that he had grown up in the past several years, and he could make breakfast, too. 

_Oh, but he’s so adorable like this - how could I leave him?_

Kakashi’s silver hair was tousled from sleep, and his darling face, still mostly unwrinkled, was so relaxed with all the heavy burdens of leadership far, far away now that he was properly retired.

_But he’ll be so happy if I make him breakfast._

Iruka stroked his husband’s hair, glorying one last time in the sight of him, before leaving the bedroom, closing the door behind him, and distractedly walking down the stairs to the kitchen.

_First, I’ll make some tea, then I’ll…_

But he stopped on the last step of the wooden staircase, because –

“Kakashi?”

There was a second older Kakashi in strange clothes sprawled over their anniversary table. He was forcefully holding up Iruka’s old secret hunter-nin uniform in a single white-knuckled hand – and he was also watching the mirror-silvery surface of the table underneath him with two dazed dark eyes.

Then he was looking over at Iruka –

And his eyes somehow widened even more.

\-- 

Iruka was in the mirror – and Iruka was on the staircase – and the Iruka on the staircase was the same one in the mirror – and Kakashi looked ahead of him to the one on the staircase, because it was that one who was now staring down at the mirror-altered surface of their favorite table, and –

Simultaneously, in the mirror and in person in front of Kakashi –

Iruka stiffened and whispered in terror:

“We’re in my memory jutsu.”


	6. Chapter 6

The Iruka on the staircase wavered. His whole body fluttered as if a wind gust flew through him. With worsening tension, Kakashi watched as the wood staircase itself did the same thing, and then –

They were in complete blackness, and not as far apart. This Iruka didn’t look as young as before, but now he was supernaturally lit up in white light. He was bare-footed, wearing only sleeping clothes, and visibly distraught, standing spotlighted in the darkness. His voice was the exact same as the man who Kakashi had loved for the past two decades. He’d been missing that very voice, he desperately wanted to hear it now, but it was unexpectedly full of fear and pierced through with shards of panic.

“You tried to counter it,” the Iruka announced, sounding astonished and horrified. “You tried to counter it while you were _inside_ the jutsu? Kakashi, what were you thinking?!”

Shame flooded Kakashi instantaneously. He winced and pulled back a little. There was a harsh unpleasant familiarity to Iruka’s indictment: he’d experienced it a few times over their relationship. But it had never been filtered with such anguished accusation, one that seemed to indicate defeat. Instinctively, Kakashi tried to shrug and raise his hands in faux-surrender, but he creeped upon the realization yet again - this was genjutsu, that’s why they were in total darkness…

This… this wasn’t even Iruka… was it? 

Was it really him?

Certainly, it must be some fragmented part of Iruka Umino, because this Iruka was rapidly working through what had happened right in front of Kakashi. His whole demeanor turned over into crisis management. His subsequent hurried hand formations were related to the memory genjutsu, but soon his expression darkened, and he shook his head, and -

The Iruka stared down at his fingers, his dark eyes widening even more. 

“You reversed the jutsu _on me_ within the jutsu I used on you.”

Suddenly, the spotlighted Iruka looked up at him: they met eyes in such a sickening way that Kakashi tasted bile on his tongue again. He had never seen that emotion on Iruka’s face, but he knew it from his days as ANBU and during periods of warfare, seen it on allies and enemies alike. It was…

Iruka murmured, utterly hollow:

“Everything’s bleeding together because my brain is bleeding.”

_He’s afraid he’s killed me._

As if to confirm Kakashi’s wretched idea, Iruka’s beautiful brown face, scar and all, became increasingly pale, the color seemingly fading away into the darkness around him. He had started to shiver, something barely noticeable in the strangeness of things, but Kakashi knew how Iruka held himself, how he had been holding himself for the last twenty years, and… the man was trembling. 

“My love for you is keeping my jutsu running without me controlling it anymore,” Iruka declared, thin, dismal, in disbelief. “It’ll keep going until I die, but by then… you’ll also…” 

His words drifted off into the unknown, and then his chest heaved once, unable to handle it, everything, anything, and then - Iruka’s figure dulled and dissipated into the bleak blackness. 

Kakashi didn’t even have a second before everything around him exploded into cacophonous colors.

He was standing in the Hokage’s office… his office, Naruto’s office, but it was twenty years younger, missing portraits of himself and his protégé, and instead emphasizing the Sandaime and Yondaime. Unintentionally, he was facing the door, so he turned around, trying to understand.

Iruka Umino was standing stiffly next to him, his shoulders back, his eyes focused ahead on...

“I understand you don’t want to lie to him,” Hiruzen Sarutobi consoled Iruka, his great wrinkled face worried about the man before him. “But all shinobi keep secrets from their loved ones. He has secrets you’ll never know; he’ll have more as time goes on. You only have this one, Iruka…” The Hokage pursed his lips, unsmiling, and his black eyes gave a severe glint. “I let you quit being a hunter-nin, but you cannot share this with anyone, not even your lover.”

As the memory made itself painfully clear what it was about, Kakashi shifted to staring over at Iruka. His mouth filled with distaste, observing Iruka’s upset and disobedient reaction to the Sandaime’s argument. As to be expected, Iruka wasn’t even trying to hide his scowl: he was downright glowering at the leader of Konoha like Hiruzen was a disruptive kid in his classroom. It was a familiar expression, one Kakashi got all the time when he was messing around too much, but – to show it to the Hokage - !

Startlingly, Iruka followed up his displeasure with several biting words. “He’s not a one-night stand, Hokage-sama,” he ground out, his whole body turning into stonework. As Kakashi watched, only inches away, he witnessed Iruka lift his head with irrepressible pride and passion overtaking him. 

“Kakashi Hatake is a good man,” Iruka declared, sharp and steely as a kunai. His eyes never left Hiruzen’s across the desk as he concluded cuttingly, “I won’t forgive you for making me lie to him.”

The declaration was so overwhelming that Kakashi unthinkingly reached over to comfort Iruka, who… - who spun suddenly, looking as if he’d just realized for the first time Kakashi was there! 

Iruka's eyes went wide with alarm, then confusion, then –

A four-man unit of ANBU crashed through the dark cabin, blasting the front door open. The Snow missing nin cut upwards into Iruka’s cheek as she twisted in place to see them, but she was too slow. Her entire body was suddenly crushed by constricting wooden snakes, springing from the arms of –

Half-collapsed and hanging off the cabin’s wall, Iruka followed Tenzo’s approach with weary eyes reddened from crying. The still-masked ANBU immediately disposed of the missing nin’s corpse, tossing her aside, and silently broke the chakra-enhanced manacles holding Iruka up off the ground. 

“Iruka-sensei, I’m sorry we’re late,” Tenzo said, sounding dreadfully remorseful.

But Iruka didn’t seem to mind: he was cradling his bleeding cheek, where the knife had gone up through his age-old horizontal scar, and looked anxiously towards the other ANBU, peering past Tenzo. With a cracked voice, he implored them, “I need a medical-nin to heal this before it scars.”

The medical-nin stepped forward, kneeled down, and treated Iruka without saying a word. 

Next, Iruka gazed upward at Tenzo, his dark eyes misty and pleading. “You can’t tell Kakashi about this. He’ll be so upset.”

Staying hidden behind his porcelain mask, Tenzo seemed reluctant to respond, let alone agree to the request. The shinobi finally answered by saying, “He’s the Hokage, Iruka-sensei. He sent us here.”

Confusion covered Iruka’s painfully expressive face, marred by blood, tears, and exhaustion. He shook his head and leaned away from the medical-nin, maintaining hard eye contact with Tenzo.

He insisted with aching pitifulness:

“No, don’t tell him I cried.”

Kakashi abruptly realized that he was standing in the shadowed corner of the cabin, half-wrecked and smoking from the force of the ANBU’s frontal assault. He only noticed because, just as Tenzo slowly and sorrowfully nodded, distinctly still not wanting to acquiesce, Iruka’s expression relaxed, and he smudged fresh red blood across his lovely brown skin and darker older scar. Sighing in relief and shaky pain, Iruka smiled, seemingly to himself, and said to no one in particular, “I can’t wait to see him again,” and then he looked up, soft and dazed, and –

_Fuck, it’s like he’s looking right at me._

That very same second -

Teary-eyed and bloody-faced, Iruka startled and jumped to his feet, staring directly at Kakashi in the shadowed corner.

All of a sudden, they weren’t in the dark cabin: they were back in the Hokage’s office, his office. It was obviously his office from all the little touches here and there, showing the memory was from his first year in the position, not long after the Fourth Shinobi War, sometime before their marriage.

Horribly, however, his current self wasn’t in the Hokage’s chair. 

Instead, a second Kakashi sat in that spot, blue mask high, both dark eyes peeved while studying the paperwork on the desk. This other version of him seemed particularly irritated. He could recognize visible signs of aggravation, almost certainly about the ridiculous work ahead of him, probably something that would keep him busy for a while. 

He was also skinnier than he should be, and too pale, and wearied, and weak.

“Just come home really quick. Eat a little, take a nap. You’ll be right back.”

Kakashi looked sharply to his right – and found Iruka Umino standing there, smiling hopefully. 

_Oh shit, I remember this one._

Embarrassment ate away at him like rot destroying the inside of a tree. He wanted so badly to look away, to move on hastily from this, to not have to endure this again, but the memory pushed onwards, disregarding his every want and desire, his every fear and pulsating shame. 

The Kakashi in the chair flicked up a displeased dual gaze to Iruka, still holding a scroll in his hand.

“Stop mothering me, I’ll be fine.”

Beside him, Iruka didn’t seem to hear the comment at first: he stayed perfectly still. But, oh, Kakashi knew that his husband _had_ heard what was said towards him, because he remembered this situation far too fucking well, and he flinched in advance of what was about to come.

His stupid younger self had not a damn clue.

“Well, my mother died in defense of the village, so maybe I _am_ behaving like her,” Iruka said so acidly that the very air seemed to melt all around him. The Hokage-Kakashi noticed the sudden tone shift and began to appear increasingly alarmed as he realized something was going awry.

However, Iruka wasn’t done. He continued with poisonous flippancy: “I’ll try to remember your ‘Stop mothering me’ comment when I’m at your funeral, reading your gravestone, ‘the Rokudaime starved himself to death physically and emotionally because he didn’t have time to be human.’”

The past Kakashi was staring incredulously at Iruka; he’d dropped the scroll on the desk. But, as that Hokage-Kakashi tried to intercede on the heated monologue, Iruka concluded in a frail brittle tone, “Then again, we’re not married, so maybe to you all I am is a mother. I’ll think about it tonight when I’m sleeping over at my friends.”

Then Iruka pivoted on his heel and passed the current Kakashi without looking around. It had been miserably evident back when the fight first happened, but now that they were this close…

_Ah… fuck, he really **was** crying…_

Unlike last time, Kakashi rushed after the Iruka of the past, stupidly and sentimentally wanting to comfort him, like he should have done back then, when he’d been too stunned and mystified to save the day. 

He was down the corridor in a flash, following Iruka’s memory.

Somehow he’d lost Iruka…

Heart pounding in his chest, Kakashi glanced about, trying to guess where his husband might go. There hadn’t been anyone else in the building that night when they’d quarreled except ANBU. He remembered what he’d done after Iruka’s exit, which had been sitting dumbly in place, questioning his every action over the last thirty years, wondering if he should climb up to the roof and jump off it to his early death. But, no - no, that wasn’t going to happen this time. This time, he was going to –

_Oh. Oh, Iruka._

There was a coat closet by the main office. It had very little it in most of the time, but some of their allies really appreciated the dedicated space, so Konoha had set it aside for that purpose alone. Of course, the chūnin-staff tossed in office supplies, and sometimes folks had sex in there, but –

But, in the memory, Iruka Umino had apparently slipped inside the coat closet to hide, because Kakashi could see him through the cracked door, standing inside the little room alone. One hand was covering his eyes, while the other was clenched at his side. He was soundlessly weeping to himself, something evident by the small shake of his shoulders. It was so overpoweringly upsetting that –

Kakashi threw open the door, grabbed Iruka by the shoulders, and shook him back and forth.

He feverishly confessed, desperate not to see Iruka cry anymore.

“I love you, I’m sorry! I’m so stupid. Please forgive me.”

After a few ferocious jostlings, Iruka’s teary eyes opened. His face swam with confusion as he looked over Kakashi in his distraught state, and, then, out of nowhere, he sputtered, disbelieving, “We’re in my memory jutsu, aren’t we? Why? What happened? What did I do wrong?”

Unlike before, Kakashi instantly replied, absurdly relieved to have another fragment of Iruka realize their situation: “I reversed the jutsu within your jutsu - your brain is bleeding - you love me - and I think you thought I was dead - and you were going to kill me because you thought I was the bad guy, but I’m not - I love you, I should have married you right after our first kiss, but I’m a trash coward, and I waited way too long – I’m just so sorry.”

Iruka swiftly, surely covered Kakashi’s unsteady hands on his shoulders. “Ah, wait, hang on.”

But it was so hard to stop, he wanted to kiss this Iruka silly, he wanted to be with him forever.

Clearly, that was the incorrect response, because Iruka violently tightened his grip on Kakashi, and his expression sharpened like only a shinobi’s could in the midst of combat. 

“You have to break your jutsu and get out of my memories. Here, copy this, I know you can do it.”

Amazing him, making him feel foolish, this fragment of Iruka held Kakashi’s hands and slowly went through the formations of the clarified repair, fixing what Kakashi had done wrong when he inverted the jutsu. It was highly unusual, trying to memorize it on the fly, deep within a genjutsu, when his own brain was definitely bleeding, but he could do it, because Iruka believed he could do it, and so he did it.

As he finished the last move, Kakashi glanced up, curious if he got it right.

Iruka touched his cheek.

In response, Kakashi felt his eyes uncontrollably brim with tears.

As the world went shimmery all around them –

Stroking Kakashi’s masked scar, Iruka said softly, “I love you.”

A single new tear curved down this Iruka’s cheek as he spoke his last words.

“I’m so happy you’re alive.”


	7. Chapter 7

Kakashi was back in his ancestral home, but he was alone. His body felt like a crumbling mountain. He could picture his skeleton splintered under skin and muscle. Yet no blood or bile burnt his tongue, splattered on his lips, boiled up his esophagus. Even though he couldn’t tell it perfectly, he knew based on Iruka’s comments: his own brain was bleeding, damaged by the prolonged genjutsu.

All he had to do was break his chakra flow.

He would be out of the jutsu.

But…

Fear ran up his spine like ANBU flying over the rooftops. As he surveyed the living room, the recreation of where his father had once walked, he knew the aching, awful truth: Iruka wasn’t here. 

If Kakashi left the genjutsu now, would…

_Will Iruka be trapped here?_

_Will he die?_

Kakashi went to a dark place, a place darker than the dead of night. He wasn’t willing to take the chance, not after seeing Iruka’s devotion, over, and over, and over, in memories, in the present day. Imagery of pink brain tissue, swollen, slick with red wandered over his thoughts, but he was already forcefully redirecting his world into remembering Iruka Umino, sometime, somehow, anytime, anyhow. There was no use in being alive if Iruka was dead. He just had to find Iruka once again.

Shame tickled his senses. They weren’t in this situation entirely because of him but – fuck. He gotten Iruka trapped in this jutsu; he’d never done anything as stupid as this in their whole relationship. Sure, yes, there was moments where he’d fucked up, where he’d made Iruka wilt or explode or cry.

But this -

_Embarrassing. This is fucking embarrassing._

“Anko says it doesn’t fit her anymore.”

Kakashi jerked up his head; he realized instantly they were in his old bachelor apartment. He understood, obviously, that this was a memory, but something was different about it, something runny, something fluid, something slippery, something rainy and slick and supernatural. The room didn’t look entirely right, or perhaps right at all: it wavered weirdly, like the wooden staircase had, like the rippling mirror-anniversary-table, like the genjutsu was struggling, combining, coalescing. 

Certainly, it was a memory, but… but…

Iruka stepped into view, coming out of the bathroom. His brown skin showed his youth; his dark curious eyes revealed hopeful interest in Kakashi’s opinion. They were in those few years between first getting together and the Fourth Shinobi War, and this was the day that… that…

“What do you think?” Iruka asked while he self-consciously tugged the skin-tight black mesh over his chest. Imitating Anko and her orange skirt, the man was also wearing a pair of small black shorts. The shinobi mesh was impressively, deliciously, wrongfully tight as it stretched across Iruka’s bare thighs, his taut abdomen, his magnificent chest, his pronounced biceps. As Iruka picked at the tight mesh encircling his leg a bit above his knee, he inadvertently turned and bent down some, revealing the firm inviting lines of his ass in the too-tight black shorts. 

For all his visible blushing embarrassment, Iruka seemed surprised and pleased with what he was seeing, the dark mesh crisscrossing over his fine brown skin, but he clearly wanted to hear Kakashi’s judgment. Still slightly bent over, adjusting the mesh down his thighs, showing so much gorgeous muscle refined from years of shinobi training… Iruka glanced up innocently through dark eyelashes.

In a stilted tone, Kakashi stated, “Excuse me a moment.”

Then he walked out of the bedroom and stood alone in the hallway.

Ever so unsteadily, Kakashi brought up his fingers, pressed them to his nose, and then looked down at his hand. As he’d been expecting, several droplets of red blood greeted his single-eyed gaze.

_I have a nosebleed? What am I, a preteen boy?_

There was no real need to look past his fingers, but he did it anyway and easily spotted the other embarrassing thing he didn’t want Iruka to see. Although his dark blue standard-issue pants were purposefully loose, they couldn’t stop his dumbly raging erection from protesting its confinement. 

Shaky and stupid, Kakashi couldn’t help but reach down and touch himself.

He flinched immediately, squeezing his eye shut.

_Shit, I’m about to come._

“… Kakashi? Are you okay? Do you need my help?”

He promptly slammed shut the bedroom door, blushing as red as the blood on his fingertips. An instant tumultuous war sprang up in his mind, fiercely questioning if he should get off real quick in the hallway to play it cool with Iruka, or if he should just admit to it, or if he should flicker away and just go die in the bushes somewhere. The damnably good sight of his lover Iruka Umino in black mesh, bent over, showing long lines of muscle, looking up like a shy curious virgin… ah… ah, fuck.

“But you are never going to die, Rival!”

Rapid and unnerved, Kakashi looked left, lowering his hand from his nose. 

Maito Gai grinned so brilliantly that Kakashi nearly covered his eyes, but he stopped himself, if only to see just what his best friend was up to. As could be predicted, Gai was triumphant in his display, pulling back on his wheelchair, lifting himself partially into the air. His teeth were so very white, and his eyes burning such a coal-black, that he distracted Kakashi from thinking much more than –

“It might happen, Gai,” he interjected peaceably, “and if I do, I’m leaving Iruka in your care.”

The elite shinobi, his lifelong friend, grinned a little less and instead nodded in understanding.

“I will do my best.”

Kakashi found his eyes drifting back over to Mirai, to Asuma and Kurenai’s little daughter. She was busily asking street vendors for the sweets that Gai had requested: she was definitely confused about him and Gai, but she was doing as much as she could to understand the both of them. It was sweet, and Kakashi thought about having a child, a fleeting thought that very seldom floated through him. 

As always, he let it go.

He was already happy. He had Iruka.

But seeing Mirai…

_What if I die?_

It was as if one of Asuma’s chakra-ablaze blades stabbed his heart.

He had died once before: Iruka had not responded well afterwards when Kakashi came back to life. Certainly, it had been a bittersweet pleasure, like dark chocolate or pure sake, when he got the chance to talk with his father. He never thought he would again. Because of Kakashi’s sacrifice, they sat together by a campfire... Kakashi had felt serene in death when he spoke of Iruka, the man who looked at him not for the Sharingan or his mysterious mask but for his very truest conflicted self. 

His father had been happy for him.

When he was alive once again, though… Kakashi felt no serenity about dying. 

Iruka had not been relieved. Instead, he had been so distraught it made Kakashi die a little inside. For a full hour, Iruka had said not a word, just holding onto him, the both of them standing upright in the rubble where they’d met after the mass resurrection. 

Shinobi and civilians had passed by, bewildered by the scene, but Kakashi did not worry about them.

He worried about Iruka because his lover had finally said…

**“You can’t die again. I’ll go crazy if you die.”**

So Kakashi said again, this time a bit more agitated, “Take care of him, Gai. Anything he needs.”

Gai dropped his wheelchair to the ground, assessing his friend. He nodded seriously, his expression going as grave as the topic of conversation, and declared, ready for combat, “Of course, Kakashi.”

“Don’t sleep with him,” Kakashi warned, looking down at Gai, frowning behind his mask.

Unexpectedly, Gai blushed, both cheeks filling with pink. “Oh, I would never!” he cried out.

_Ah, but then again -_

“No,” Kakashi corrected himself firmly. “Sleep with him if he wants that.”

Gai’s chiseled face was rapidly turning fully red. “Kakashi, I do not know if I could –”

Kakashi waved his hand dismissively in the air. “Do whatever he wants. I won’t have him wasting away because I’m dead.” He turned down his assertive gaze to Gai again and deliberately made sure that he pinned his friend down with his stare. “You said you would take care of him.”

“You’ll take care of me?”

The question was so softly spoken. It was in the darkness, they were in the darkness. Iruka was underneath him, warm and nude, sweaty and sincere. His hands were tentative against Kakashi’s bare chest, delicately brushing the flushed white skin. His eyes were pitch-black in the nighttime, barely visible in the moonlight filtering through the window. But Kakashi instinctively recognized the look on Iruka’s face: it was both the shadow of fear and the glimmer of trust. 

“Yes, I swear,” Kakashi whispered. He brushed back Iruka’s hair like he had a few weeks ago. His heart was heavy, and he kept thinking about all the dead from Leaf and Sound and Sand, but Iruka made him feel alive, really truly alive, and his whole world seem to sparkle when he was with the other man, and he kissed Iruka, hoping his kiss could express everything deep and secret inside him. 

When he pulled away, Iruka touched Kakashi’s face with budding confidence. Mourning transformed the chūnin: he had wanted to see Kakashi after the invasion and the Hokage’s death, but it had proven to be less a social visit and more one of desperate, desperate need. Their kissing had fallen into touching, then there were less clothes, then no clothes, and Iruka’s earlier hesitative nature, his uncertainty if he could please Kakashi, seemed to vanish entirely in their shared passion.

But now it had reappeared. The Hokage’s funeral was tomorrow. Naruto would leave the village soon with Jiraiya. Just what Iruka would do, what Kakashi would do, what Konoha would do…

He might die. 

Soon.

Iruka thought the same thing. He could see it in the other man’s expression.

They kissed… 

Kakashi pressed their scars together.

He said softly to Iruka, “Hold onto me.”

Trust never looked so sweet on a man as Iruka gently put his arms around Kakashi’s back.

There was a keen frightening second of making sure everything was as it should be…

Everything was right, and Kakashi was slow and careful, and Iruka’s nails digging into his back was complete magnificence and so impossibly what he wanted the most that he almost forgot to breathe.

He barely found the strength to say, “I’m in all the way,” and then Iruka moved his hips in just the worst way imaginable, and Kakashi found his entire body singing stiff electric wild, and he stared down at Iruka with his eye wide and the Sharingan open spinning scarlet, and Iruka smiled up at him in an exhilarated predatory way as if Kakashi was merely meek little prey, and their bodies became one with sparks of love and flashes of life, and Kakashi could not understand a single thing except that he had never felt this way with anyone else, and that Iruka was looking at him so differently than anyone else ever had, and when Iruka forcibly kissed him and half-gasped out, “I’m coming, oh, I’m –” it electrified Kakashi, and his total identity filled with lightning, and he held himself up but really he collapsed into Iruka, they weren’t alone anymore, they were together, they were one.

He felt so weak and so empowered as he gazed at Iruka, the both of them dreaming in the darkness.

He wondered if he would die tomorrow.

If he did, what he might think about in that last second?

Would he be sorrowful for leaving Iruka behind?

Would he be happy that for a second, a solitary second, he had something as good as this?

Suddenly, Iruka confessed, staring at him, “I love you.”

There seemed something strange about it, something wobbly and surreal, and Kakashi was taken aback, reflecting on the sweat on his skin, the sex in the air, the moonlight dancing between them.

He slowly sat up and looked down at Iruka, beautifully disheveled in bed and watching him.

Then… 

Then he realized it.

He remembered it.

“That’s wrong. You didn’t say that,” Kakashi whispered, his heart in his throat. 

Iruka considered him for a prolonged progressively worse moment – before his eyes went wide.

“You’re right. You said it first,” Iruka recalled, voice and body and soul all suddenly trembling. “I didn’t say it that night, which I always regretted, because –” For his dark skin, the man could still turn ashen and pitiful, and he did just that as he remembered aloud, sounding broken, so very broken, “The next day you fought Itachi, and you were in a coma, and I thought you would die.”

Kakashi could tell they were in a genjutsu – somebody’s genjutsu – somebody’s very powerful, very poisonous genjutsu – but he couldn’t stand Iruka crying, he never could, and he reached out to embrace his husband –

Iruka stopped him by holding up a hand.

“This is my jutsu,” he announced, sounding utterly dead inside. “I’ve been killing us with it.”

But before Kakashi could even attempt to respond, Iruka looked sharply at him. In a second, he was abruptly twenty years older with signs of age on his face and new scars all across on his bare skin. 

They were the right age again, but still nude, still in Iruka’s bachelor apartment, still in the darkness.

“This might kill us both,” Iruka said, audibly regaining strength, his Will of Fire, Konoha’s Will of Fire suddenly burning each of his words, “- and if it does, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to try and save us.”

Kakashi could only nod for a second, but then he, too, felt the village ideals lighting his lost sorry way. Even though he could tell Iruka didn’t want him to move, Kakashi was still swift within the genjutsu, and so he quickly kissed Iruka’s scarred cheek and shot him a genuine unmasked smile. 

“Just tell me what to do. I’m always with you, Iruka.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, sorry for the long delay! I hope you've been well, and I hope you enjoy the latest installment of "Memories." Please let me know what you think. I value you and your opinion so very, very much. Thank you, always, for reading.
> 
> ___

The wedding was wonderful.

Gai cried, Rock Lee cried louder, it became a competition. Naruto hoisted Iruka up on his shoulders and insisted on letting Kurama, the Nine-Tails, make a toast at the reception. Hinata helpfully restrained him after the sake made him too rambunctious. The shinobi were strangely sweet, the civilians immensely proud, and everyone was happy, most of them drunk. It was peculiar, watching it all unfold, knowing that just a few years ago this was a place plagued by warfare and the Infinite Tsukuyomi. There were people missing in the crowd. Kakashi felt his soul ache a little, wanting to see again Minato and Kushina, Obito and Rin, and their lost friends, all enjoying their celebration. 

Iruka was laughing, dusting off his beautiful attire, then pushing back his hair as Naruto teased him. 

_Why did I wait so long? I could have seen him this happy sooner._

The cherry blossoms were luscious and delicate, dancing about Iruka as if they also desired him.

Kakashi took a desperate step forward; his hand reached slowly out for his husband.

At the same moment, Iruka looked his way, seemingly just noticing his interest.

Then the whole damn world tilted, the cherry blossoms perfectly stilling in the air, the faces of their friends freezing in an exquisite yet terrifying show of eternal joy, the wedding becoming purgatory. 

There, in the midst of it, the only thing that Kakashi cared about, there was Iruka Umino, his dark eyes wide, his scarred expression still shifting, his own arms outstretched and striving to touch –

The goodbye kiss was quick, but Iruka meant it, so very obviously. He was ever so fond of Iruka heading out to the Academy in the mornings, even if it did leave him alone, bored and lazily looking through manga. Interestingly, this time, this morning, Iruka lingered longer in his embrace, pressing his nose against Kakashi’s masked throat. His sigh was long and a bit sorry; he sounded like he wanted to stay, but he clearly knew he had to go to work. His arms were tight around Kakashi’s waist like he didn’t want to let him go. It was ridiculously flattering, being wanted after two decades.

His following instinct was real and immediate, and Kakashi wouldn’t deny it, not after so many years together. He slipped down his mask, kissed Iruka’s scar, just the very end of it, and whispered into his darling’s hair, barely holding back his pleasure at being so sincerely loved, “They need you, sensei. I’ll be fine - maybe I’ll go to the training field today. Stretch out these old bones.”

Sunlight burned his eyes, both of them, what a weird feeling. He squinted into the sky, wondering if he should have stayed inside. He might get a sunburn at this rate: those were a fucking pain. He hated how his skin peeled, even if Iruka putting aloe vera on his mild burns was a secret indulgence. 

_Well, I’m already here. I might as well._

He pulled up his mask and situated his hitai-ate in his hair. His gloved hands were a bit sore being so unused – he really had neglected exercising, how did Iruka put up with him? – but he took to stretching in Maito Gai style calisthenics. Perhaps he should have called up his old friend, gotten him out to train this morning. But then again Gai would have made him stay out all day, and Kakashi wanted to be home when Iruka returned from work. Their anniversary trip to the hot springs still made him smile, wickedly satisfied with how he made Iruka whine and eventually even beg for it, but that was weeks ago now, and Kakashi was feeling a familiar itch. He wanted to hear –

“Fuck you, Hatake.”

He looked sharply to his right; the shinobi’s fist went by his new eye. The dodge was instinctive, as were his next few moves, all instant responses to the supernatural speed of his attacker, who went after him with freakish haste and lethality bound up in her bones. She was just as fast as him, which said something, something horrible that sunk dark black stones in the pit of his stomach. She was aiming for his head, she was going after his skull, she was trying to get him even momentarily still. 

He almost managed to complete the Substitution Jutsu.

But – 

But her finger just barely brushed his silver eyebrow, and –

And that was it.

Down he went, down to the grass, down to the floor of the training field.

He saw endless blue sky. 

White clouds drifted by, ignorant to his terror.

Her face hovered over his.

Her hand meticulously traced his eyebrow, the one over his old eye, before she stopped at the middle of his forehead.

She tapped there.

Once.

Twice.

And then Kakashi wasn’t looking up at the ordinary face of a woman anymore. Hers was one so nondescript he could never have identified her, not even with the Sharingan. It was eerie, how she had looked like no one and nobody and nothing.

But now –

But now she looked like him… just like him. He stared up at her, saw the tiniest stray hairs of his silver eyebrow, the surreal replica of his black beauty mark, the faintest scars from chickenpox and pre-genin training injuries and top-secret ANBU missions all over his nude pale-skinned body.

She was him in his barest state.

And then she grinned, showing him all of his scroll-white teeth, nearly closing his black eyes in nasty elation. 

“I know they’ll kill me, Hatake, but I don’t even care. I can’t wait to see their faces.” 

She was pulling off his flak jacket, she was disrobing him entirely. He couldn’t move; he stared up at her as she did so. So suddenly, so soon, she was wearing all of his clothing and tugging his mask up her face. She was still creepily grinning under the dark blue cloth: her joy was skin-crawlingly sick.

“Do you think your sweet sensei will catch me trying to kill your son? Wouldn’t that be something?” 

Her black eyes – his black eyes! – they were crueler than poison decomposing skin, rotting flesh away mushy and black, as she said, shivering and thrilled, “I’d kill your little teacher thing, but he’s worth shit and spit, nothing more. Now Naruto Uzumaki, now that boy’s going to be _fun_. Of course he’ll kill me, but seeing his face when he thinks his daddy’s come to kill him?” 

Her lips – his lips! – they pursed together, oh so pleased. “It’ll make my death real worth it.”

She patted Kakashi’s scarred cheek with her gloved hand so patronizingly the act alone was painful. 

The fade to blackness wasn’t immediate; Kakashi fought it fiercely, ghastly afraid of what it meant.

_Iruka._

_**Iruka!** _

He tried to grab her. 

He tried to grab Iruka.

His husband, lovingly reaching for him, the pretty cherry blossoms swirling around him…

Someone was prying his fingers off their shoulders, shattering his bones with their divine strength.

“Kakashi-sensei, stop it, you’re hurting me.”

He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t open, but he tried and tried and tried. Finally, he saw – 

He saw -

Pink hair and sea-green eyes.

No more wedding flowers, but instead the woman with the same flair.

It was Sakura, so aptly named.

“Iruka,” Kakashi choked out the question, seeing only his former student and nothing else.

Her eyes went sad, and he suddenly felt tears wet his scar, streak down his face. 

There were no dreams and no genjutsu as Kakashi fell down into the deepest unconsciousness.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My deepest apologies. Life intervened, delaying writing. 
> 
> May you enjoy this update.
> 
> ____

His head was heavy, it was hard to swallow, and the room spun, but…

But Kakashi willed himself awake. Old instinct made him open the right eye first, keeping the Sharingan shut. But then he remembered he’d survived the war, and lost his friend again, and so he fluttered the left open too. Hospital room. Konoha hospital room. White walls, white floor, white sheets. Big wide-frame window. Outside lit in pastels of watery blue and faded pink. He moved his tongue in his mouth, surprised that he didn’t taste coppery blood. His body was sore, but not from overuse, but from… ah, from lack of use. He’d been in a few comas before… he recognized their consequences, the lame ache lingering leftover in his body, and this was… this was the same.

Still, hurt meant nothing to him. 

The creak of his bones as he adjusted so he could look around – it didn’t bother him.

Surprise flattened the rest of his actions: Sasuke Uchiha was sitting off on the side. He was…

His former student was completely asleep while still standing upright, leaning against a wood cabinet and the wall. His arm was tight over his chest, which slowly rose and fell as he dreamed.

Confusion tried to flood Kakashi’s senses, but he fought it off. Vertigo made everything wobble in weird looping circles, almost like the room was physically repeating itself. His eyelids felt a thousand times heavier than usual; he could tell he was squinting more than staring, and his eyelashes kept getting in the way of his studious gaze. The room was so very sterile white, and it wasn’t readily apparent if the pastel light outside was sunrise or sunset, and Sasuke Uchiha was waiting on Kakashi like he was something important. 

Frankly, he could never tell if Sasuke liked him all that much. A begrudging respect, perhaps, but…

He exhaled through his nose a little as he thought about when he gave Sasuke advice about his daughter. Bad advice. Very bad advice. Later, his former student, the same one who threatened his to end life a half-dozen times, sometimes with blood pouring out of his face, had said he wanted to throw Kakashi in the river. Ha… how times change, and how they don’t change at all. Sakura and Sasuke together, Sarada their little joy, maybe a future Hokage…? Wouldn’t that be something? Funnily enough, Shino Aburame had been her homeroom teacher, but ultimately Iruka had guided –

_Oh, fucking hell. **Iruka.**_

Both his brain and vision resented the sudden realization that he’d undergone something terrible: they both reacted as if he was still in the Fourth Shinobi War. There were a few disturbing seconds of crushing, crashing pain as he remembered their shared bloody entangled journey through his and Iruka’s memories. An incredibly skilled assassin had used Kakashi for his image and his surface thoughts, just to taunt and torture Naruto in the worst way. She’d known she was going to die, so – so she wanted to go out explosively? by traumatizing the Hokage? 

And… and…

Iruka had seen him dead again. Kakashi’s corpse on Naruto’s desk, his own former desk. He could remember – awkwardly, ah - from Iruka’s memories… how eerie and wrong – how Iruka screamed **“No!”** while discovering Kakashi’s dead body and seeing all the blood spray on the walls, with Naruto glowing red-gold staring straight at him, and ANBU, some bleeding, a few dead, those alive holding Iruka back from throwing himself across the gruesome mess to get to… Kakashi.

… ah, Iruka was once a hunter-nin?

Clearly he’d not been one for long. He might have had some penchant for investigating people’s pasts, but he seemingly did not like learning the darkest secrets of mankind (… did Iruka choke a rapist to death? was Kakashi remembering that correctly?) so he had quit and left behind the mask. 

Wait.

Where was Iruka now?

Kakashi tried to sit up, but his whole body protested. He ended up feeling like he’d pulled every muscle attached to his frame, causing him to make a low displeased sound in his throat. Swiftly stirring from sleep, Sasuke Uchiha opened his dark eyes and immediately observed his jōnin-sensei, first with his regular eyes, then –

Ah, the Sharingan. Strange to see it like this, trained on him, searching for errors.

Whatever Sasuke saw did not seem to bother him, so away went the dazzling red and black. He pushed off the wall and stood in place, somehow both at ease and strung with tension. 

Before Kakashi could even ask, Sasuke answered his concern.

“Iruka is next door. He’s stable, but he’s in a coma.”

It was now perfectly natural to force past pain and stand up, even if Kakashi immediately collapsed onto the hospital floor in a mangled heap. He swiped at his masked face, wiping sweat out of his eyes, then continued to half-stagger, half-crawl across the room in pursuit of his husband.

Sasuke appeared in a flicker at Kakashi’s side, picked him up, wrapping his one arm around Kakashi’s waist. They didn’t look at each other as his former student assisted his move. It was a sickening relief, to be helped in his brittle moment of need, but between them, they understood Kakashi would have similarly intervened if Sasuke was seeking Sakura or Sarada. 

The hallway was empty, but the adjacent room was full.

Full of flowers.

It had not been true of Kakashi’s room, but then again, he imagined few people would have been welcomed into his comatose proximity after he had his identity so frightfully stolen and abused.

But Kakashi saw beyond blooming roses and carnations and baby’s breath flowers – 

He saw Iruka Umino looking like he was sweetly sleeping tucked into white sheets. 

His heart swam with blood. His eyes widened to the point of pain. 

And he pushed off of Sasuke and stumbled the rest of the way to his husband.

For some unintelligible reason, Kakashi found himself fixated on Iruka’s hair, which was in serious disarray, tiny strands sticking up everywhere. His ponytail was badly done, crushed under his head against the hospital pillow. Without thinking, Kakashi bit his thumb and placed his hand on the white sheet by Iruka’s leg, running through the hand formations. Black markings flushed outwards from his palm across the pale cloth in response. Then, in a hearty puff of smoke, there appeared –

“Kakashi?” Pakkun asked, looking up at him curiously. He recognized the setting, a too-familiar one.

But the ninken quickly realized where he was, that it wasn’t for Kakashi, that it was for Iruka. Grumbling deep in his chest, Pakkun carefully assessed Iruka in the bed, then glanced back to Kakashi, now much more intense, expecting and prepared for a mission-level task.

It was an incredibly vital mission, and Kakashi made that clear.

“You need to get Iruka’s brush, the one by our bed,” he said, his voice raspy from lack of use. 

Pakkun stood at attention on all fours – then bounded out the door, past Sasuke, who stood and watched without comment, his face set with great steadfast focus.

Although Kakashi didn’t really care about what Sasuke thought of him in this moment, he could identify the meaning behind the other shinobi’s expression. His own face settled out into old cool composure in reaction. Lifting his head slightly, moving his hand to cover Iruka’s cold hand, Kakashi announced, unflinching, undaunted, “I’m not the enemy. Naruto took care of her.” He paused then said firmly, “This is my husband, and I want time alone with him.”

In a deliberate show of peace, Sasuke acquiesced by nodding and walking out the room.

So Kakashi was finally alone and together with Iruka when he buried his face into the side of Iruka’s leg, into that sterile pristine white cloth, and took several huge heaving breaths to steady himself.

He didn’t need Sasuke to say it: they had been recovering in medical comas for a good while.

Perhaps he had woken up because he was better oriented to surviving brain trauma.

Maybe it was because Iruka had taken the worst hit, the victim of Kakashi’s repaired memory jutsu.

But… 

But they were out of the genjutsu. 

And Pakkun was bringing a brush, so that way Kakashi could fix Iruka’s hair. 

Then… he would wait for his husband to wake up.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Leap Day, my dearests. 
> 
> This is the loving conclusion of my angsty, dreamy story. 
> 
> May you enjoy, and always know I write just for you.
> 
> ____

“Kakashi-sensei.”

His eyes slowly rose from the hospital sheets to Naruto Uzumaki, his successor and student. They were on either side of Iruka, medically asleep in bed; their gazes met over his prone body. Dozens of things were silently exchanged all at once. Sorrowed apology for being taken advantage of by the assassin. Opulent relief for seeing each other alive again. Devastating misery from Iruka still being unconscious and unresponsive. These were all said without being said. Normally Kakashi kept such tremendous emotion to himself, but Naruto did not. His overflowing feelings defined him, made him strong, sped him from pre-genin to Hokage of Konoha within two decades. 

Yet Naruto seemed choked up as he stood beside his first sensei.

Responsibility blanketed Kakashi’s shoulders upon seeing his adopted son so distressed.

He lifted himself up out of the chair and stood enough so that they were eye-to-eye. Without the strain of the Sharingan, he could appraise Naruto more seriously; he found the young man fractionally shaky. Enough time around the terrific creature that was Naruto Uzumaki had taught Kakashi just when he was likely interacting with a shadow clone… and this wasn’t one of them. This was the real deal.

In the aftermath of his attempted murder, the Hokage was fearlessly visiting the man who wore the face of his assassin. 

There was no need to apologize even further, having just done so silently, but Kakashi slightly lowered his head and said in a quiet tone, “I hope you can forgive me.”

Naruto seemed to burn at the comment: his bright eyes went a little chakra-wild. But so soon he transformed back to regularity, whatever that meant for the unusual shinobi. After visibly swallowing, likely pushing down memories of a crazed Kakashi Hatake coming to kill him, Naruto nodded several times in a row and offered him a broad but flustered smile. 

“Of course, Kakashi-sensei,” he replied, oddly demure. “I know it wasn’t you.”

But there was a dark hint of trauma running across his expression, and Kakashi felt fury rise up through his insides like smoke billowing from red-hot fire. The assassin nin had achieved her morbid dream. She had done something to Naruto Uzumaki. It made Kakashi want to find her corpse – now more than ever – and – and –

His eyes dropped to Iruka, seemingly asleep in bed. 

_No. Let it go._

_She wants to haunt us. Don’t let her._

Shaking her away, Kakashi glanced back up to Naruto and said resolutely, careful with his tone and half-masked expression, “I’m sorry that happened. We’ll have to make new memories together.”

Instantly Naruto’s expression brightened: he looked like a boy again, just for a second. His smile turned right into a grin, juvenile and impossibly wide. “Yeah, Kakashi-sensei,” he declared, exuberance taking over and filling him up, flickering bits of gold-red Kurama chakra at the edges of his form and hair. “Let’s do that! Definitely when Iruka-sensei wakes up, we gotta do something, you guys and Hinata and the kids – we should go on a picnic or something, all of us, together.”

The bite of Naruto saying ‘when Iruka-sensei wakes up’ – fuck, that was something raw and wrong.

But Kakashi nodded and sunk back down in the chair. He didn’t totally mean to dismiss his student, the reigning Hokage, but he slowly realized he had done just that, especially as Naruto shifted awkwardly. It didn’t even fully occur to him to look up when the gifted shinobi murmured, “I’m…” 

Then Naruto really did choke, and Kakashi whipped up his head to see –

Although his vivid blue eyes were wet with tears, Naruto was smiling weird, unabashedly relieved. “I’m really glad you’re alive, that it wasn’t you, that Iruka-sensei found you and got you back.”

Blinking in confusion, Kakashi heard himself ask aloud, “… did he say that to you?”

As he shook his head negatively, Naruto wiped at his face, drying his whisker-marked cheeks. “Not me – he told Sakura. Iruka-sensei came to his senses, grabbed her, shouted, ‘It’s Kakashi, it’s really him,’ then passed out. You woke up right after. Sakura put you guys under, to try and fix all the damage. She’s really something – the old medic-nin said it couldn’t be done, that you’d both die, but she wouldn’t hear it.”

Kakashi’s heart melted like butter.

No wonder Sasuke had been lingering about… it wasn’t just for security purposes.

_… aw, the boy cares._

So did Sakura and Naruto. 

_Ah, we’re so lucky._

Almost on cue, as if reading his mind, Naruto laughed and rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, you can’t imagine how many people showed up to help you and Iruka-sensei! The whole village tried to visit you guys. When Tenzo heard what happened, he lost his mind. I had to send him off on a long-distance S-rank mission so he had something to do with himself. And, man - Bushy-Brow-sensei!” 

The world hero turned Hokage shook his head back-and-forth, looking both ridiculously impressed and incredulous at the same time. “Since we had you in isolation, he’s been bringing Iruka-sensei flowers every day for weeks now. We had to stop that, too – he was monopolizing Ino’s business! So he started going out into the forest. He even fought off a huge bear to get Iruka-sensei wildflowers!”

It was so difficult to restrain himself from blushing! But somehow Kakashi forced it away, unwilling to look too terribly moved by the affection of the village and their friends. He just couldn’t stand to be an embarrassed mess in front of someone else – well, anyone besides Iruka, anyway.

“Ha…” Kakashi managed to mutter. “That’s…” But he couldn’t get anything coherent to come out of his mouth, so he ended up saying, very soft under his breath, looking down at Iruka: “… wow.”

“Yeah! Everybody loves you guys!” Naruto practically shouted. His grin was back full force. But he seemed to recognize the writing on the wall, and so he reached over, wanting a fist-bump from Kakashi. It was not nearly the strangest thing Naruto had asked of him, so Kakashi relented, then watched as the far-too sincere shinobi gazed longingly, lovingly, at his father-sensei-precious person.

Then he whispered, not looking at Kakashi, maybe not even talking to him:

“He’ll wake up, believe it.”

A split second later, Naruto was bouncing out the door, tossing up a final wave as he went.

That was… a bit too much for the day.

As he done the past few hours, Kakashi resumed sitting next to Iruka, watching his husband breathe. Since Pakkun had returned with the comb, he’d already fixed up Iruka, knowing just how he liked his hair to look. The struggle of those first minutes – when his atrophied muscles screamed and every brush of Iruka’s hair rang agony through his nerves – that had already faded into history. 

It was all worth it: Iruka looked more like a sleeping beauty than a comatose soldier.

Occasionally, as the night wore on, Kakashi noticed he was stroking Iruka’s hand without thinking. The motion was reassuring to him, certainly, but… perhaps it was for his wounded husband, too?

At some point, he rolled up his sleeves, willing himself to stretch through the pain, just so he could continue to caress Iruka’s hand, just in case it was helping out in some way, in any way.

The moon was a delicate slice of itself in the dark skies.

But Kakashi’s eyes weren’t out there among the stars.

They stayed on Iruka.

Every once in a while, he glanced down at their hands married together. How often they had done this, holding hands, over the course of twenty years, through warfare and farewells and celebrations. 

His gaze drifted up his arm as exhaustion demanded he rest.

The tiniest fuzziest vision floated by: Iruka, within the genjutsu, dressed as hunter-nin, examining the chalkboard, staring hard at a memory of Kakashi as ANBU as he murdered a rogue shinobi. 

_He was looking at…_

And there it was, on his skin now – what Kakashi had never noticed, but Iruka must have, long long ago.

A very small scar, likely from the tip of a shuriken catching his skin – sat below Kakashi’s red ANBU tattoo, just where Iruka had fixated during the interrogation memory jutsu. It was so subtle that Kakashi himself had never really noticed it; he wasn’t even sure when he got the mark. But, as he looked down at it now, he was struck by the stunning, soul-quivering truth of Iruka’s severe stare within the jutsu as the man had stared at such an odd place during an otherwise violent memory.

_… he must have realized the dead Kakashi on the Hokage desk… she didn’t have this scar._

Even though it hadn’t much harassed Kakashi before, the vague concern had still admittedly bothered him: how had the assassin shinobi copied him so well? Perhaps Naruto and other elite nin already knew, but… he wasn’t so sure how it functioned, leaving it as a loose question these last few hours.

Yet, apparently, Iruka had found a flaw. He discovered a vital feature to the jutsu.

The jutsu wasn’t copying the real Kakashi Hatake.

No, the assassin’s jutsu –

It was copying how Kakashi saw himself. 

Since Kakashi never registered the little shuriken scar, the assassin didn’t have it. She didn’t have his billion deep memories nor all his most-intimate secrets, but she had the floating fleeting thoughts of his everyday, those of loving Iruka and serving Konoha and fighting for the village. She had his current skin, his imagined version of himself with two dark eyes and fine silver hair and a few dozen scars, the most important on his face and chest and the worst ones he remembered from missions.

Iruka… must have remembered the scar. 

He would.

Just as Iruka had started to finalize his identification within the memory jutsu... that was when Kakashi had broken off the wall and attacked him. That's why Iruka had looked so startled; that's what he had been trying to do right when Kakashi's fist cracked the hunter-nin porcelain. He had been trying to say, _It's me, and I know it's you._

The man loved Kakashi with his whole heart, his entire being. In his grief, he had still noticed it, the little mark on Kakashi’s skin in the memory jutsu. He knew Kakashi so well. He loved Iruka so much. They loved each other so, so much.

It was stupid, but Kakashi –

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to cry. It wouldn’t help anything or anybody to weep. 

_Damn you, don’t -_

“Aw … ‘kashi, don’t cry.”

The world could have ended all at once, sharp and sudden turning black, signaling collective collapse - - - **Kakashi was that caught off-guard.**

Nothing seemed to make sense as he suddenly stared over at Iruka, who was looking at him with sleepy half-lidded eyes and a warm but tiredly wavering expression. Kakashi was still thoughtlessly staring, unable to grasp what was happening, when his husband wriggled his hand out from Kakashi’s grasp – and then forced Kakashi’s fingers to interlace with his own. Instead of silence dominating the flower-filled hospital room, there was a strange percussion sound - _thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump_ \- that was repeating so loud Kakashi almost lost it.

Iruka’s scarred face lifted as he smiled tenderly at Kakashi. 

“Your heart’s going crazy,” he whispered.

_Ah. It’s me. It’s my heart… I’m… I’m happy._

Relief so overwhelmed him, Kakashi acted recklessly: he threw himself into a hard embrace of Iruka, burying his face into the spot between Iruka’s neck and shoulder. The soft, similarly pleased laughter of his husband in his hair was so very sweet, it nearly killed him on the spot. He only just fought off the insanity of his entire body releasing all of its tension at once – when Iruka gingerly pulled him closer, wrapping both arms around Kakashi and nuzzling his right ear. 

“Oh, Kakashi,” Iruka said softly, ache and pain in his poor voice. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, I –” he began, but the words died in his throat as he realized Iruka was crying into his shoulder. 

He let his husband have a moment of woe: what they had endured was impossible to process with only simple reassurances. Instead of speaking down Iruka’s feelings, as he had sometimes so stupidly done before, Kakashi was there for Iruka in his time of crisis and need. Of course, they were both to blame, and neither of them were to blame, and he said as much over the next several hours, whispering into Iruka’s hair and saying it louder, more insistently, when Iruka tried to take all the guilt onto himself. 

Only then did Kakashi pull away and hold the love of his life by the shoulders. 

He was so dazzled to see Iruka, real, awake, with grief-reddened eyes and weak expression. The man was damn gorgeous. Joy rushed through him, once again witnessing the imperfect perfection that was Iruka Umino, a shinobi so very true to himself, one who could so freely cry and unravel when in Kakashi’s arms. Yet he wouldn’t let Iruka forever darken his worldview with misery.

No, because - 

That was just another memory now.

They could make more. They would make more.

It started now, right now – their future together.

After carefully wiping off Iruka’s tears from his scarred cheeks, Kakashi shifted forward, slowly pulling down his mask as he did so. His intent was obvious: they were making the same intense eye contact that was so familiar between them. 

Surprise swept over Iruka’s features. 

He clearly knew this move – it was what they did when they wanted to kiss one another. It was the same exact motion and method leading up to their first kiss before the chūnin trials, when Iruka acknowledged his students had grown then stuck around, challenging Kakashi to be truthful with him. 

To do it now… after all that they experienced…

It was an offered pledge of unity. 

A promise of many more kisses.

Iruka gave him a pleased little smile and then pulled Kakashi forward the last few inches. 

That kiss – it was kaleidoscopic – it was multi-dimensional – it was brilliant and bold. 

… perhaps they’d rarely reference what they saw in each other’s minds, perhaps they’d spend many months and years working through the scenes of lust and love and violence and sorrow. 

They would certainly have a discussion about Iruka’s hidden time as a hunter-nin, about their profound mutual fear of the other dying first, about Kakashi regretting his past mistakes in their relationship, about Iruka’s reinvigorated trauma after twice seeing him dead, about their students and the village loving them so much that the Hokage personally oversaw their recovery and Maito Gai fought a bear for a handful of flowers. They would have to thank Sasuke and Sakura, Tenzo, all the others. They would have to reassure the village that this Kakashi was real and that Konoha was truly safe and that theirs was still a time of wonderful peace. 

They would go to the hot springs. Kakashi would kiss Iruka silly, make him moan. He would ask Iruka to take him again, like that time on the desk when he was Hokage. They would –

Together they would make new memories. 

A hundred thousand new memories. 

A billion new memories.

As long as they had each other, the number didn’t matter, just that they made memories together.


End file.
